Published: June 5, 2013

It has been well over a decade since the previous full-length release from Lycanthia, but lots has happened in the meantime, well at least in regards to the band's lienu-up. Band's founder Lee Tassaker has gone through more than fifteen different band members.

You'd think that all this would make it hard for Tassaker to maintan the focus and core of the idea behind Lycanthia. Fortunately that is not the case. This, mostly thanks to his strong vision as well as thanks to couple of his long lasting guitar duo Giv Gariano and Stephen Mikulic.

In many ways Oligarchy is a very typical Lycanthia album and it stays very true to the genre of death/doom metal by delivering a dark atmosphere that is at same time haunting and gorgeous. In best My Dying Bride style the band ads depth tho their music by adding female vocals and violins, which work very well together with the rest of the music.

What truly sets this album apart from the band's previous releases is the newfound sense of maturity in regard to song-writing. Songs are better bolted together and none the less, written and arranged with good sense for the detail. A perfect examples of this are epics “Forgone” and “Despondency In Crescendo”.

On the other hand, however the band still does keep in their comfort zone so don't expect much growth in that vein. This means that there are no big surprises but the album is filled with solid songwriting so that makes the lack of experimenting and originality, less noticeable.

Overall this is a fine release from band that seemed doomed. Oligarchy doesn't offer much new but it does display a band with much bigger dose of maturity and alone that makes it not only more pleasurable, but also promising. I can't help, but look forward to see what's next for this band. I just hope that I won't have to wait on that for another decade or so.